J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote that stories like The Lord of the Rings “grow like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mold of the mind.” I’ve always been interested in this darkness of the leaf-mold of not just the mind but of the whole self. As a teenager, I wrote about my dreams and hopes that came to me while wandering through the forest. As a college and then a graduate student, I studied myths of creativity – most of them medieval, but many modern and embedded in fantasy and science fiction. As a priest, I wear black as a reminder that all we do as Christians is engage with a God who, although essentially personal (especially in Jesus Christ), is still an abiding mystery in our lives. And as a father, I hope to raise my children to see and notice the sheer beauty of the world and to respect that other mystery of God: the inner soul of another person.

All that said, I think that diving deep into the darkness of our souls can be, at times, a very lighthearted thing. “Darkness” doesn’t need to be either overly serious or bitterly depressing. Many of the things I’ve discovered while plumbing the depths (of myself and the world around me) have led me not only to great joy but to playfulness. It helps keep me sane but also is a whole lot of fun. It’s important to remember, I think, that the mysteries of God are present for us to engage with God’s Creation, which can be a very serious matter and a very joyful matter at the same time. This may be another of God’s mysteries, and if so it’s a mystery to which we’ve not given enough attention in the Church.

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A bit more prosaically, I’m a priest of the Episcopal Church of the United States. I serve a parish in Manlius, a town in central New York, Christ Episcopal Church. I received a Master of Divinity degree from the School of Theology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Currently, I also proudly serve as a representative to the InterFaith Works roundtable of faith leaders as the diocesan representative of the Episcopal Diocese of Central New York.